Smoking is bad for you - everybody knows that and yet… worldwide more people smoke than ever. Tobacco companies are just moving more product to the poorer countries now, while plenty of people continue to smoke in rich countries.

Eliminating or even slowing tobacco is in practice impossible - even though it would have a big upside and the only downside is the temporary discomfort of the addicts.

If eliminating tobacco is fantasy, then killing fossil fuel is insanity. The world runs on fossil fuel and you just can’t change gears easily or quickly.

To drastically reduce fossil fuel would mean death and poverty for millions - huge down side - and whats the payoff? - uncertain climate mitigation.

Yet Big Tobacco companies are still reporting record profits - because they are moving into other countries where there are many more people and a lack of regulations, awareness or infrastructure to deal with them.

I have news for you Rick; Tobacco companies don’t care about death or poverty for millions and neither does Exxon - the only thing on their minds is profit.

sure - you have to try - I like the idea of throwing some weight behind solar and wave energy. It just bugs me when we compare tobacco to the energy that has made us rich as humans. Tobacco is really the opposite of fossil fuel.

Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna! Greed is Good! Greed is Good! The free market will rescue all of us from all of our ills. The free market is our salvation. Greed is good! Praise be to Gordon Gecko! Hare Krishna!

Free market cult worshipers ascribe much importance to the speech in Oliver Stone’s movie “Wall Street” in which Gordon Gecko claims that “Greed is good, greed purifies…”. I find this quite amusing, since they usually ignore the ending of the movie, in which that greed brings ruin and destruction.

With banks falling faster than trees in the Amazon, we seem to be witnessing the effects of two decades of economic policies that valued greed over the common good. We borrowed against a future utopia that we were sure was just around the corner, a utopia brought on by low taxes and a free market unleashed. Now we are realizing that the word “utopia” in fact means “no place”. The loans are coming due, and it is becoming clear that the so-called economic boom of recent years was a mirage brought on by borrowed money swishing around the economy.

Rick writes - fossil fuels are still the line between a semblance of civilization and massive death and destruction.

Perhaps you can explain to me how Japan manages to be a modern economy while producing a tiny fraction of the carbon dioxide that we do in North America. Or how Europe has already implemented many of the carbon dioxide reduction strategies that are proposed for North America, without your promised economic armagedon.

I mean they import energy and material and build stuff with it. They do a great job for a place without much for natural resources. Aren’t they something like 3rd for oil imports? I’m thinking they must put out a decent amount of CO2.

Hey Japan puts out twice as much as evil Canada in total CO2. They have the larger population but my goodness, we have the tar sands. We have the huge expanse of territory. We have evil Steve…. and we still can’t keep up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

Catch22 you name is quite correct. You dislike corporations making a profit in a free enertprice market system, but losing that would mean losing all our social programs including unversal healthcare, education, welfare, etc. Profits generate wealth, wealth pays taxes. We need corporations to make more profit so they can hire more good paying jobs, and pay their taxes. Oh, and your RRSP/Pension fund requres corporations to make a profit.

Industry has seized on the slowdown to lobby for delayed or watered down regulations, arguing that directives set out by the European Commission earlier this year would force them to cut jobs or relocate factories outside the European Union.

Some politicians also acknowledge that the financial crisis could hinder efforts to forge international agreements on reducing emissions.

So you’re saying that, similarly to how we can’t get rid of tobacco, we’re never going to be able to get rid of fossil fuels. But the aspect of the comparison you’re missing is that, while only nicotine can relieve your nicotine cravings, fossil fuels are completely replaceable with other sources of energy.

And it’s not even going to hurt the economy to do it! Europe has already managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels and their economy is doing just as well, if not better, than ours.

“fossil fuels are completely replaceable with other sources of energy.”

That is absolutely false. It is clear you do not know how deep and dependant we are on oil to sustain our modern society. It’s all about Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI). No other source of energy has the same energy density as oil. In the good old days we consumed 1 unit of energy to get 100 units of energy in oil. Today it’s about 25. Alternatives are LUCKY to get 2:1, some, like ethanol, are negative. Others, like hydrogen, are gross net losses of energy (70-85% loss).

Here is an interesting tidbit. One barrel of oil is the same as 7 YEARS of human labour. Thus at 100:1, one day of human labour would give us 100 days of oil energy. But with alternatives, 1 day of human labour only returns just over a day of energy.

It’s not how much energy we get out of a fuel, it’s how much energy it takes to get that energy out of the fuel. That’s everything. Simple example. Hunter-gatherers have no free time, they spend all their time getting food. Thus their EROEI is 1:1. But the invension of farming showed that we can get more energy returned on energy invested. Enough that only a few people were needed to farm so the rest of humanity was freed up to advance civilization. Thus, EROEI is EVERYTHING. And alternatives are closer to the hunter-gatherer EROEI than farmers.

Plus, there is far more in oil than liquid transport fuels. There is no replacement for many oil products at the volume we need as a modern society. Plastics is a clear example. It’s a requirement to protect our food, yet cannot be made from any other source in the volume we need.

You can’t fly planes on electricity.

You really need to see this series to understand how important oil is, and how important EROEI is.

It’s same “Science for hire” approach used by the tobacco companies, and the oil companies are hiring the same organizations that the tobacco companies did to produce it. Yup, definitely no connection here. This point is, of course, outlined in the video, should you care to watch it.

Paul S. writes: Here’s the point. AGW activists have, in spite of huge sums of money spent, failed to persuade the Canadian public that drastic action is required on C02. Having failed, AGW alarmists are incapable of introspection so must invent a bogeyman: tobacco and yes, the trail of pennies from Exxon.

Now I know what Orwell’s 1984 looks like. The above post typifies the “War Against Facts” that certain right wing organizations wage. Their goal is to balance every inconvenient factual assertion with a counterwieght “fact” that is more conducive to their agenda. In the absence of clear facts, the public retreats to an implicit assumption that there is no such thing as fact, only opinion.

How’s this for an opinion: I believe that these intellectual saboteurs are helping to destroy the values that we have inherited from the rennaisance. Before the rennaisance, the church was the ultimate source of truth. The church did not need to provide evidence for its assertions. It was enough that the church had political and military power. During the rennaisance, it became a more widespread view that assertions needed to be backed up by EVIDENCE. The church lost power because its assertions could not be backed up by logical argument and facts.

As the public slowly loses sight of actual facts, they will increasingly look to authority figures to form their views. They will look for facts from sources they trust and identify with. But trust is largely an emotional phenomenon, and is thus easily manipulated, especially when the public is afraid.

I’m sure that the right wing GW deniers will accuse me of the same thing that I am accusing them of. But there is a key difference between those who actually understand the science and those whose main purpose is the obfuscate the science: Those who know the science have EVIDENCE to back up their assertions, while those who obfuscate have only half-facts and flawed arguments.

I seriously doubt the parent poster has any real understanding of the arguments he is trying to refute. I challenge him to prove me wrong, by describing why the typical characterization of greenhouse gasses as a plate of glass is incorrect. I’m waiting…

Thank you for responding to my request. Strictly speaking your response is correct. However I wasn’t really referring to a literal glass roof, but rather a mechanism by which greenhouse gasses are absorbed. This will be a bit long, but I’d like to describe some of my understanding of the science.

The common understanding of the greenhouse effect is that the greenhouse molecules act as some sort of shield. They allow energy from the sun (short wave radiation) to pass through, while absorbing infrared (long wave radiation) emitted from the ground, making the air warmer in the process. This was the understanding of the greenhouse effect in the early 1900’s. Experiments were done in which infrared light was shone through different tubes of CO2. Those experiments showed that CO2 didn’t seem to absorb much infrared radiation, and that doubling the length of the tubes had only a small effect. Thus, many scientists of that time were not convinced that CO2 was an important greenhouse gas. The problem was that their model of the greenhouse effect was simplistic and incorrect.

The actual mechanism of the greenhouse effect is subtle and a bit complicated.

Heat Balance

The Sun provides the Earth with short wave radiative energy. The Earth absorbs that short wave radiation and emits long wave infrared radiation, which is emitted into space. If more energy is coming in than is going out, then the Earth warms, increasing the outgoing long wave radiation until the energy output balances the input.

The Infrared Relay

The warm surface of the Earth emits infrared radiation. That radiation travels upwards towards space. But on the way, there is a good chance that the parcel of infrared radiation will run into a greenhouse gas particle, such as CO2 or H2O. The infrared may be absorbed, making the gas molecule warmer. The gas molecule may then re-emit another parcel of infrared radiation out towards space. The new infrared parcel may go through the same process. The infrared parcel may be absorbed and re-emitted several times before leaving the Earth for space.

The Upper Emitting Layer

There is an upper layer from which almost all infrared radiation is emitted to space. The amount of energy emitted by this layer basically controls the heat balance of the Earth. If the amount of infrared energy emitted by this upper layer is reduced, then the Earth warms.

The Effect of Carbon Dioxide

Adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere makes it more difficult for infrared radiation to escape into space. The effect is most important in the upper emitting layer. Adding more CO2 ensures that infrared radiation parcels will be absorbed and re-emitted more frequently. This results in the infrared parcels being emitted to space at HIGHERALTITUDES. Because temperature decreases with altitude, the CO2 causes the infrared parcel to be emitted from a colder layer of air. This makes the radiation process less efficient, resulting in less energy flow into space. Thus the Earth warms.

It should also be noted that there is little water vapor at in these emitting layers, since the air is so dry. Thus water vapor is not a significant factor in this process.

“How’s this for an opinion: I believe that these intellectual saboteurs are helping to destroy the values that we have inherited from the rennaisance.” - CATCH22

Let’s not exxaggerate. Questioning AGW orthodoxy is not detroying any “inheritance”. Your example is simply another overwrought exxaggeration warmers like to use to suppress and silence any questioning of the “facts”.

“The church did not need to provide evidence for its assertions. It was enough that the church had political and military power. During the rennaisance, it became a more widespread view that assertions needed to be backed up by EVIDENCE.”

And that’s what skeptics are doing. Demanding more evidence. Climate scientists are claiming an ability to predict climate hundreds of years in advance and at present, much of the populace remains doubtful of this claim. Being a democracy, scientists do not rule, but must instead persuade the public that the drastic measurest they advocate must be taken. So far, climate change activists have been unable to do this.

I hope those of you that want in my pocket to solve global warming will be ready to repay me when you become the emperor with no clothes. Otherwise we should have the option of putting all of you on the shores of Hudson’s Bay where you can tend to your imaginary palm trees and your memorials to the Polar Bear. I was in the early phases of my graduate science education when the coming of the new Ice Age phonies were after grants to spread the sky is falling alarm in my University. Now the same climate whores are serving the needs of the neo-socialists that after the fall of the Soviet Union have found a home in the environmental movement. I know both sides of this coin well and am sad to see us hustled by this crowd again.

There is only one complete and exact computer of global climate and that is the planet itself. By definition it complies with all laws of nature. Einstein said “no number of tests can prove I’m right but only one is needed to prove I’m wrong”. There have been many tests that prove to be wrong the theory that added atmospheric carbon dioxide causes significant global warming. They were run on the planet computer and the results are archived in the Vostok and EPICA ice cores and other proxies. They show that, repeatedly, a temperature increasing trend changed to a decreasing trend and vice versa. For those who understand how feedback works, this temperature trend direction change proves that there is no significant net positive feedback. All that is needed to determine if there is net positive feedback is a temperature trace for a long enough time to average out cyclic variation from random noise and other factors, ENSO, etc. The temperature trace does not even need to be correct in absolute terms just reasonably accurate in relative terms time-wise.

While determination of the magnitude and even the sign of feedback in climate is difficult using climatology, it is trivial, as described above, for someone who understands feedback to deduce from the temperature record alone that significant net positive feedback does not exist. Many climatologists apparently don’t know how feedback works so they don’t realize this. Unaware of their ignorance, they impose significant net positive feedback in their GCMs which causes them to predict substantial warming from carbon dioxide increase. Without significant net positive feedback, the GCMs do not predict significant Global Warming.

Seems to me that Desmog is getting more and more enlightened people commenting who realize that AGW is a fraud. Interesting trend.

Oh, and about the Cigs in other countries. I saw a program about that on the Discovery Channel a while back. Seems it’s their culturial and religeous beliefs that will prevent any attempts to curb smoking. They have a firm belief that God will take them when God wants them regardless if they smoke or not.

I think I can paint even a broader stroke. People of all cultures are fools. They prove it by paying good money to suck tar into their lungs. Common sense should overcome cultural pressures to smoke. I conclude that 30% of humanity has no common sense.

I’m just standing by and letting you guys play amongst yourselves for awhile until the new comments policy comes into effect. I imagine that many of the other regular participants are doing the same. I look forward to conversations that are on-topic and civil, with fewer actionable diatribes and outright lies. So enjoy your 15 minutes, guys.

Fern Eludes to upcoming censorship on the Blog.
Could this be?
Is Desmog going to admit defeat on the issue and resort to the propaganda methods of reality denier sites like RealClimate?
Time will tell. But I suspect she may be on to something.
Since the left has never needed truth and honesty to promote their agendas, I see no reason they should care about it now.
As the world cools the propaganda will increase.

Excerpt:
Winds are Dominant Cause of Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet Losses
Two new studies summarised in a news article in Science magazine point to wind-induced circulation changes in the ocean as the dominant cause of the recent ice losses through the glaciers draining both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, not ‘global warming.’

You guys have no shame. The fact is that the wind patterns that increased the melting have occurred in the past. They are in fact not that unusual. What IS unusual is the well documented THINNINGOFTHEARCTICSEAICE. The thinness of the ice made it extremely vulnerable to wind and current variations. The thin ice was easily blown out of the Arctic waters and into warmer waters. This year’s melting accelerated in late August due to some storms which shattered the already thin ice. Once it was broken, the melting accelerated.

This might be worst situation but we should teach people and companies something about these issues. Everybody is making money regardless considering this issue. There should be distance learning high school diploma for all those people who need these kind of education. Government must force them to education themselves from these issues and try to solve them

So true that CO2 is affecting the air to be polluted filled by much destructive substances in the atmosphere. Also the cigarette has much substances turning to the air that was converted to different kinds of harmful elements filling the air. A lot of us would give a no fax cash advance to get Glenn Beck and the growing Chicken Little cabal to pipe down.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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The DeSmog UK epic history series introduces you to the creator of the climate change hockey stick graph and the man forever in the sceptics’ crosshairs. Read PARTONE of the most intimate interview with Professor Michael Mann ever published.

Professor Michael Mann is, through the sceptic looking glass, an accomplished dissembler, a manipulator of science, a fraud, and a threat to the American people.